The Indian IT industry has retained its edge not because of competitive pricing alone but due to a host of other factors such as investing in people, infrastructure, innovation etc, Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), has said.

He said, while Coimbatore is not a one-industry city as it has flourishing manufacturing and textile industries, what the city lacked to make it a tier-I city is ‘leadership' and the textile industry here should ‘bite the bullet better now than later' and follow global standards on a host of issues like labour laws, pollution control, etc, to make it sustainable.

No impact

Speaking at the inaugural session of ‘Connect Coimbatore 2011', jointly organised by Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Coimbatore Zone, and STPI here on Thursday, he said the Indian IT industry has sustained a 7-10 per cent wage hike year after year and every year its global customers raised the question as to whether its competitiveness was sustainable after five years with such an annual wage increase. This was the story Indian IT industry has been hearing for the past 10 years. But nothing has changed and Indian IT industry has continued to be competitive.

Mr Lakshmi Narayanan said the Indian IT industry was ‘riding' not on the pricing factor alone but on a host of other issues — in terms of investing in people, infrastructure, research, innovation, etc, and these were those that ‘offered long-term sustainable advantages'.

He said, the IT companies were now speaking about going green and being carbon neutral. While it was expensive and while its benefit may not be felt for 3-5 years, its benefit would be felt in the longer term when all its clients become green. When the IT industries' clients demand that the service providers also become green, only those industries that had invested well ahead of time ‘will remain competitive'.

Emerging IT hub

The CTS Vice-Chairman said, referring to Coimbatore that is emerging as an IT hub, said not only people in the city should believe that it is a tier-I city, but the people and the city ‘will have to behave like leaders'. This was how other cities had demonstrated even before they arrived — Bangalore as an IT destination and Chennai as the ‘Detroit of India'. Coimbatore was in a position to stake a claim to be a leader in what it chooses to be and definitely in 5-10 years down the line ‘it will happen'.

Mr Lakshmi Narayanan said, if the vision or goal was limited in time, then people tend to take ‘all kinds of short-cuts' that may be beneficial in the short run. But for building institutions in the long-term, companies should adopt ‘global practices right from the beginning'. While in the short term this might be painful, in the long term this would help in building institutions that are sustainable.

Needed, All-round growth

Referring to the 8-9 per cent Indian GDP growth, he said future growth on a large base would be possible only through productivity improvement across all sectors and this improvement came only through technology. The IT industry worked with clients to make them more productive and technology played a crucial role in making companies productive and the Coimbatore companies would have to ‘invest in technology' to remain globally competitive and sustain in business. This required a lot of transparency and significant investment.

Mr P.W.C. Davidar, Principal Secretary-IT, Tamil Nadu, said, while the IT industries in Madurai and Tiruchi regions had generated software exports worth about Rs 25 crore each, Coimbatore region's software exports was worth more than Rs 700 crore last year and what the city needed was to ‘build on this eco-system'.

Tragic gap

He said, the academic institutions in the region ‘have to really wake up' to bridge the lacunae in communication skills of the students. The only gap in the entire system particularly relating to IT was communication skills which he said ‘is a tragic gap'. Teachers could address this problem by allotting 15 minutes of each class to students to explain what was taught to them during the class.

Mrs Nandini Rangaswamy, Chairperson, CII Tamil Nadu, said, the thrust for the IT sector given by the Tamil Nadu Government has led to the spread of IT industry to not only to tier-II and III towns, but to the rural areas as well, generating job opportunities in the rural areas which was a way forward as that would insulate the rural youths from social evils that may be prevalent in urban centres.

Mr Ashok Bakthavathsalam, Chairman, Coimbatore Connect, termed the growth of IT industry in Coimbatore as ‘spectacular', especially in the last two years, with the entry of IT big wigs like CTS, Dell Computers and Bosch Engineering, and after Chennai, the city has emerged as the next IT destination in Tamil Nadu.

Mr J. Balamurugan, Chairman, CII Coimbatore zone, and Mr R. Venugopal, GM and Centre Head, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, Coimbatore, spoke.

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